GMO's Catherine LeGraw - Capitalizing on Global Asset Allocation in 2024 | #531
Apr 26, 2024 • 42 minsToday's guest is Catherine LeGraw, a member of GMO’s Asset Allocation Team. In today’s episode, Catherine explains why this is “the best relative asset allocation opportunity we’ve seen in 35 years,” and “we are building portfolios with some of the highest forecasted relative and absolute returns we’ve ever seen.” She explains where she sees opportunity around the world today, why she’s excited about deep value and quality, and how she’s thinking about the Magnificent 7.
Professor Kenneth French on Risk, Return, and Rationality | #530
E529 • Apr 19, 2024 • 53 minsToday’s guest is Professor Ken French, the Roth Family Distinguished Professor of Finance at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. He’s written some of the most influential papers in finance alongside former podcast guest, Professor Eugene Fama. In today’s episode, Ken shares what topic he and Professor Fama disagree on. Then we get into a number of topics: what it means to truly be a long-term investor, the global market portfolio, misconceptions around stock buybacks, and much more.
MEBISODE: T-Bills and Chill…Most of the Time | #529
E528 • Apr 11, 2024 • 15 minsIn today’s episode, Meb reads a white paper, “T-Bills and Chill…Most of the Time.”
Cliff Asness: Timely & Timeless Investment Wisdom | #528
E527 • Apr 5, 2024 • 61 minsToday's guest is Cliff Asness, co-founder, managing principal and Chief Investment Officer at AQR Capital Management. In today’s episode, Cliff & I start by talking about some quotes he may or may not have said in the past. Then we kick around a bunch of topics. We talk about diversifying by both asset class and geography, the challenge of managing short-term expectations while keeping a long-term perspective, and how AQR is implementing AI and machine learning in their investment process.
Indexing Nevada PERS: Steve Edmundson’s $60 Billion Strategy | #527
E527 • Mar 29, 2024 • 47 minsToday’s guest is Steve Edmundson, the Chief Investment Officer of the Public Employees’ Retirement System of Nevada, which manages over $60 billion. As pension funds continue to hire more employees, pay more and more fees and build more complex portfolios, Steve is an outlier for his approach that emphasizes simplicity over complexity. He’s one of two investment professionals on staff and has indexed 100% of all publicly traded asset classes. I love it! Steve talks about the culture that allows this model to work and shares some thoughts on the rise of private markets and the impact of higher interest rates. The late Jack Bogle had a quote that applies well to Steve & Nevada PERS: “Don’t do something, just stand there!”
MEBISODE: Should CalPERS Fire Everyone And Just Buy Some ETFs? | #526
E526 • Mar 22, 2024 • 16 minsIn today’s episode, Meb reads his blog post, “Should CalPERS Fire Everyone And Just Buy Some ETFs?”
Grant Williams & Peter Atwater: The Market is 'Long Abstraction, Short Reality' | #525
E525 • Mar 15, 2024 • 55 minsToday’s episode is a masterclass in how to analyze market sentiment, which seems particularly timely given how the market has been lately. Peter shares his framework for looking at the world through the lens of certainty and control and how that drives consumer confidence. Then he and Grant kick around a bunch of topics, including the relationship between natural gas and Nvidia, Elon Musk and the velvet rope economy, gold and Bitcoin, the opportunity in Japan, and much, much more.
Tim Ranzetta, NGPF - Teaching America Personal Finance | #524
E524 • Mar 8, 2024 • 48 minsToday’s guest is Tim Ranzetta, co-founder of Next Gen Personal Finance, a non-profit organization working to increase access to financial education. In today’s episode, Tim updates us on everything going on with Next Gen Personal Finance. You all know I’m a huge proponent of teaching kids personal finance and Tim is as focused on this making this happen as much as anyone. He talks about “Mission 2030,” which is to guarantee every high school student in the US takes at least one semester-long personal finance course by 2030.
Whitney Baker on The Death of (Upside) American Exceptionalism | #523
E523 • Mar 1, 2024 • 85 minsToday’s guest is Whitney Baker, founder of Totem Macro. She previously worked at shops like Bridgewater and Soros. In today’s episode, Whitney explains what led to $500 billion in money expansion last year and why that’s driven recent performance in asset prices. She discusses the challenge the Federal Reserve faces as they try to balance inflation concerns with the need to support asset prices. Finally, Whitney talks about the huge opportunity she sees in emerging markets today and which countries have attractive valuations and troughing conditions.
How to Convert an SMA to an ETF with Wes Gray & Robert Elwood | #522
E522 • Feb 23, 2024 • 45 minsToday’s returning guest is Alpha Architect’s Wes Gray, and he’s joined by Bob Elwood, a business lawyer with a focus on investment funds. Wes and Bob just helped complete a separately managed account to ETF conversion of $770 million, so we had to get them on the show to walk through the process! They walk through the process of doing an SMA to ETF conversion via Section 351 from start to finish. They share some of the more nuances involved in the process and answer some common questions they hear over time. While the most popular ETF story so far this year is the Bitcoin ETF, this is arguably a bigger long-term story and a trend to watch in the next few years.
MEBISODE: A Better Approach to Dividend Investing
Bonus • Feb 21, 2024 • 7 minsIn today’s episode, Meb reads a paper titled, “A Better Approach to Dividend Investing.”
GMO's Tina Vandersteel on a "Once-in-a-Generation" Opportunity | #521
E521 • Feb 16, 2024 • 55 minsToday’s guest is Tina Vandersteel, who is the head of GMO’s Emerging Country Debt team. She’s been with GMO for almost two decades. In today’s episode, we dive into Tina’s teams’ recent piece about what they call a possible “once-in-a-generation opportunity” in emerging market local currency debt. Tina gives a great overview of the emerging market debt asset class and then we dive into the reasons behind her team’s call. She shares why today is reminiscent of 2004 and how she thinks about things like liquidity panics and sanctions risk. And you won’t want to miss her hot take on China. It’s not often you see the words ‘once-in-a-generation’ from a well-respected shop like GMO so I’m excited for you all to listen in.
Drew Dickson on Navigating Behavioral Biases, U.S. vs. European Stocks, & Tesla | #520
E520 • Feb 9, 2024 • 62 minsToday’s guest is Drew Dickson, founder of Albert Bridge Capital and CIO of Alpha Europe funds. We talk a lot about global investing on this show and wanted to talk about that with Drew given his focus on European markets. Between the end of 1979 and the end of 2009, both the U.S. and Europe were 26 baggers and roughly had the same returns. Since then? The U.S. has returned 15% per year while Europe has returned just 8% per year. We spend a lot of time on whether this will continue. We also talk about the impact former guest and Nobel Laureate Richard Thaler had on his investment philosophy, the importance of shedding our biases to generate alpha, his valuation of Tesla, and much more.
Ben Mackovak on The Secret Sauce of Investing in Banks | #519
E519 • Feb 2, 2024 • 62 minsToday’s guest is Ben Mackovak, Co-Founder of Strategic Value Bank Partners, an investment partnership specializing in community banks. Ben also sits on the board for several banks, giving him unique insight into what’s going on in this area. It's been a wild ride lately for the banks. 2023 was the biggest year ever for bank failures. There are concerns about commercial real estate risk in the banking system, the Federal Reserve has raised interest rates at an incredible pace, and valuations for the entire sector are at a steep discount to the market. So, we had Ben join us to talk about all of this and share if these concerns are justified or if there is still opportunity in the space.
Jared Dillian on the Keys to Live a Stress-Free Financial Life | #518
E518 • Jan 24, 2024 • 52 minsToday’s guest is Jared Dillian, the editor of The Daily Dirtnap, a daily market newsletter for investment professionals. Jared’s back on the podcast to talk about his book, No Worries: How to live a stress-free financial life, which just released yesterday. Jared talks about the 80/20 rule applied to personal finance, his “no worries” approach to investing, which he calls the awesome portfolio, and I bet you’ll be surprised by which asset has performed best since 2000. We also get Jared’s take on the market today. He touches on inflation, private equity, the bond market and more.
Bruno Caratori - The Bitcoin ETF is FINALLY Approved. Now What? | #517
E517 • Jan 13, 2024 • 41 minsToday’s guest is Bruno Caratori, co-founder & COO of Hashdex, a global crypto asset manager that launched the first crypto index ETF in the world. In today’s episode, we’re talking all about the SEC’s recent spot Bitcoin ETF approval with someone from one of the 11 companies in the Bitcoin ETF race. And in crypto fashion, the approval actually happened halfway through our episode! Bruno talks about what a wild week it was with the fake announcement by someone who hacked the SEC’s Twitter account. Then he shares the unique structure he created for their ETF (ticker DEFI) and what his prediction is for total assets in Bitcoin ETFs by the end of the year.
BlackRock's Rick Rieder on The State of Markets & The US Debt Problem | #516
E516 • Jan 10, 2024 • 56 minsToday’s returning guest is Rick Rieder, BlackRock’s CIO of Global Fixed Income and the Head of the BlackRock’s Global Allocation team. Rick recently won the Morningstar 2023 Outstanding Portfolio Manager award. In today’s episode, Rick shares his take on the macroeconomic landscape as we kick off a new year. He touches on the set up for both stocks and bonds and why he’s focused on finding companies that have “rivers of fast cash flow.” We talk about several other topics including crypto, AI, Japan, the recent shift by the Fed, US debt levels, and much more. As we wind down, Rick touches on his entrance into the ETF space this year with two fund launches.
Felix Zulauf – 2024 Macro Outlook Not Rosy | #515
E515 • Jan 3, 2024 • 44 minsToday’s guest is well-known macro-expert Felix Zulauf, founder of Zulauf Consulting. He was previously the global strategist for UBS and later ran his own asset management firm. In today’s episode, Felix shares his view of the global investment landscape from Asia to Europe to the US. He shares why the tailwinds of lower inflation may reverse and lead inflation to rise above 10%. He also touches on the state of gold, the US dollar and other currencies, and why he’s focused on the upcoming election in Taiwan.
Liz Simmie, Honeytree – A Quantamental Approach to ESG | #514
E514 • Dec 27, 2023 • 54 minsToday’s guest is Liz Simmie, co-founder Honeytree Investment Management, which recently launched an actively managed, ESG-focused ETF, BEEZ. In today’s episode, Liz dives into the strategy of BEEZ, which focuses on responsibly growing companies that are stakeholder governed, purpose driven, and make a net positive impact on the world. Then she shares some hot takes on the state of both ESG and active management. As we wind down, Liz talks about the process of launching an ETF with our friends at Alpha Architect and shares advice for anyone thinking about launching one themselves.
J.P. Morgan's Gabriela Santos Likes International Stocks for 2024 | #513
E513 • Dec 20, 2023 • 50 minsToday’s guest is Gabriela Santos, Chief Market Strategist for the Americas at J.P. Morgan Asset Management. In today’s episode, Gabi shares her view of the world after a year where the Magnificent 7 has dominated the headlines. She hammers home her excited about the opportunity set outside of the U.S. She explains why she likes the set up for Japan and India, why nearshoring is just one of the reasons why she’s bullish on Mexico, and why she thinks China has become more of a tactical trading market.